Thailand Part 1

Being slightly new to these Carnet things and having to do a border crossing on my own, I was a little nervous. As it tuned out, I somehow successfuly got my Carnet stamped out of Malaysia and entered into Thailand using their own Temporary Import paperwork as Carnets are not necessary there. Despite a bit of pushing and shoving from impatient locals behind me in the queue, I managed to find myself in Thailand and even had the correct paperwork and everything.

Elephants- brilliant!

Straight off, the scenery was (in my opinion) a bit nicer than Malaysia but also noticed 3 car wrecks so figured the driving standards aren't neccessarily going to be any better. I also noticed a lot of pick-up truck busses in use, something I saw a lot of in Guatemala. I rode to Ao Nang near Krabbi as it had been mentioned as a nice place to stay. I obviously hadn't been listening as it was basically a just base for visiting several nearby islands including that one they filmed 'The Beach' at, a film full of TWs if ever there was one. I decided that I didn't like the place immediately as the main street was lined with tour operators, taxi touts, thumping bars and overpriced restaurants. After getting a general hassling (motorbike sir, motorbike sir?? No thanks, I've already got one), being grabbed by the local ladies propping up the bar (or maybe they were 'laddies') that I thought was a restaurant plus a few 'Best of British' elements, I decided I would be heading off the following morning. As I'd ridden into Krabbi before it got dark, the sunset had some of the best colours I've ever seen though so I guess it probably wasn't all bad.

DR staring wistfully at Burma over the river

I was intent on covering some miles the following day and had intended on stopping at a what looked like a reasonably sized place called Raub. It actually turned out to be very reminiscent of the dodgy area we were taken to in Cartagena where we were warned to be on our guard just to look at the roughest, most unseaworthy supply boat I'd ever seen. Well this place looked similar but smelt slightly worse. As I still had a bit of daylight left, I followed a sign to the Burmese viewpoint, basically a little jetty from which you could see Burma on the other side of the river. In fact it looked quite similar to the side I was standing on. I briefely toyed with the idea of paying a guy with a boat to take the bike over like I did from Guatemala to Mexico and then realised that the repercusions would likely be fairly severe and quickly dropped the idea. As usual, it was now getting dark and I couldn't find a gas station so was running on fumes plus the 1/2 litre I had in my stove bottle. Just as panic began to set in and imagined running out of fuel in the hills at night, I finally arrived in Kra Buri after dark and expecting to resume the same tired routine of searching for somewhere not totally horrible to stay. I'd spied a sign on the way into town for Cabanas and these turned out to be really nice and clean and just what I needed at that moment. Sometimes it's like that.

Sorry lads, but size DOES matter!

Dinner that night was fairly interesting. I rode to a small place which was obviously the front part of the family house. As I walked in, there were several groups sat at tables with some decent looking food and soon I was trying to explain what I wanted to eat. I did my usual chicken impersonation and a nifty version of a stirfry but what they actually did was soup. Soon, a bucket of hot coals was brought to my table and inserted in the hole in the middle (I moved my legs back slightly at this point), then something that looked like a huge partially inverted collander was placed on top. Then bowls of raw meat, veg and stock were placed on the table. How it works is like this; stock and veg are placed in the trough around the edge of the bowl and in the middle, the strips of pork (it was definitely a chicken I impersonated) were placed on the middle section with the holes in. After the meat has cooked, you ladel the stock and cooked veg into your bowl and then add the meat and however much chili you fancy. And you just go on, adding more stock, veg, chili and meat until you're done. Oh, and it was delicious too.