The Road to Ranong and Dead End Return

A pound of cancer anyone? Tobacco never looked so pretty. Nong Ya Plong market.

Sunday morning the 18th and we're in Chumphon, a little town 8 hours from Bangkok by train. Having arrived rather late the night before, an early morning start was rather improbable but we didn't expect to start the day so late. It was past 9 by the time we could finally summon the energy to saddle up the bikes. The internet place downstairs informed us we couldn't use the printer after we'd selected the route we wanted to take towards Ranong so we had to look around for another internet palour with a printer that worked so that further stalled us. A rather prolonged breakfast followed with a small chat session with another pair of cyclists that just rode into town. By the time we finally started peddling it was 12 noon. We had spent more than 10 days in Bangkok looking for the perfect bicycles. The search took us through the sprawling flea markets of China town, all the up market bicycle showrooms in town and almost all the travel companies offering bicycle tours. We hoped to get second hand bike but it was soon apparant it wasn't going to be easy to find a good second hand. The few we saw were rather archaic heavy models. Probike, the best known bicycle shop in town had some pretty Trek models but all above our budget. The staff also seemed rather busy to handle our queries and didn't have too many inputs for us. Finally on some obscure lead we made our way back to the Worachak area aound China town where we came across the Merida showroom. The owner was a rather shy nervous man but he did have sound technical knowledge about bicycles and was intrested enough to offer the best of his inputs. Merida is still a fairly new brand and while it has fairly descent reviews, we were a little unsure. But with some research and added suspension forks and other minor modifications we had two rather impressive looking touring bike ready for a slightly expanded budget. The look was good but we wouldn't be completely satisfied till we baptised them through some dusty roads.


The decision to travel as much as possible by bicycle had been a long contemplated one but I was always apprehensive about my fitness to do it. One week in Bangkok and as plans were hatched to continue travelling towards China and deciding on our mode of transport I finally dared to suggest cycling as far as I could and god willing we'd make it to China. Cedric had already made many road trips by bicycle but it would be a first for me, the max being around 80 kms I had done with Dundee from Bangalore to Fireflies on Kanakpura Road and back. So we decided to test out my stamina and ability by renting bikes and cycling to Kaeng Krachan National Park. We printed out maps from Google and made the trip by small off roads for almost all the way clocking around 150 kms till the National Park entrance where we spent three beautiful days exploring the bit we could of Thailand's biggest national park. On the way we passd and slept in lovely villages and were overwhelmed by Thai hospitality. Most memorable was pitching camp in the weekly market area of a village called Nong Ya Plong thinking the market would be a weekend one only to be awakened and invited home by people living next door as the market was to start the next morning at 5am. We visited the market the next morning and were plied with freebies at almost each stall we visited. It was the random acts of kindness and encouragement from people along the way that made me decide cycling was the way to go though I did suffer in the one major uphill we crossed along the way. Hopefully peddling along daily would build my stamina along the way. And that's how we left Chumphon for Ranong where we had to go to renew Cedric's visa and also to try our luck to see if we could cross over to Myanmar to see what the whether we could travel beyond the border town of Kawthaung. The route was open for a few travellers in 2005 where they could travel by boat towards Yangon.


The road out of Chuphon led along the main highway for the first 7 kilometres after which we crossed into a smaller arterial road that ran almost parallel to the highway but with enough distance in between to hide all signs of the busy highway. Thailand has amazing roads. There are roads almost everywhere and it's only rare rural patches that still remain untarred though work is being done on them as well. The main roadways are always endless stretches of beautiful tarmac. For now we were happy with the rough off road with was a good chance for us to test our bikes and also gave us a sense of really being on a seldom travelled road.

The country lanes led us through alternating palm and rubber plantations with a few scattered houses with people cheerfully calling out helloes from the shady comfort of the wide varendas that every thai home seems to have. The road was far from being a flat stretch and was a good warm up for both bike and rider. Soon it was a proper work out and just as I felt I'd expended enough enery on uphills for a day we were back on the highway. It was a good 30 km stretch covered on the dirt track and I was more than ready to brave some fumes than another killing rough slope. Luckily for us the traffic on this stretch isn't too heavy and we were gliding along on beautiful roads for the rest of the day's ride.



Along the way we crossed the Isthmus of Kra, the narrowest part of the Malayan Peninsula that forms a 53 km bottleneck between the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Siam. We stopped at a viewpoint that allowed good glimple of the Mayanmar shore just across the Kra Buri river before it melts into the Andaman Sea. We made our stop at the village of Kra Buri where we stayed at a cosy roadside guesthouse called Pannika Resort. We had covered 70 kms by then.


A long night's struggle with mosquitoes after we foolishly slept with the door ajar for fresh air ensured we were off to another late start. After we finally started peddling and barely made it 2 km out of town we saw an inviting diversion from the highway in the form of a board that promised a waterfall 10 kms away. Deciding the road was more important than arriving on time we pushed off towards it. I was happy for the choice we made as we passed through lovely undulating countryside that remined me a lot of parts of Assam and the road to Shillong. That we passed a lot of betel nut palms with the nuts drying on the roadside made me a little nostalgic for the North East of India. But this was beautiful recompense. And the alternating ascents and free wheeling descents made it the best ride so far. We didn't dare spend much time at the Bok Krai waterfall which was actually within the Thungraya Nasak Wildlife Sanctuary. The entrace was 100thb with camping for the night but as we just wanted to visit and head back towards Ranong the lady gaurd finally let us in for 100thb for both of us. Our little diversion and plus the fact we again took a diversion from the highway to take a longer arterial road to Ranong made us break for te night along the way. But I tackled my first pass along the way. A stretch of tedious uphill that rand for around 2 kms. I did make several stops but cycled it up trying to think of cyclist who'd taken the Karakoram Highway. Around 25km from Ranong we decided to stop at the nearby Hat Yai Hot Springs and camp for the night. After a lovely bath at the hot springs frequented by locals we were invited by the range to sleep in the quarters instead stringing up our hammocks, an offer we couldn't decline. It was quite amusing to locals arriving on mopeds with only their towels on for their evening bath. We spent a lovely evening with some beers while trying to communicate in scraps of random English and Thai words.


The next morning was another blearly start. This was becoming an irritating habit. But we did reach Ranong finally and made it down to Sapanpla Pier a futher 7 kms from town. A slight problem with my visa status and having to get a re-entry permit tokk all afternoon and we finally had to postpone crossing to Myanmar for another day.


The Myanmar crossing didn't work. I had a sinking feeling it wouldn't but really didn't expect Kawthaung to be so closeted. We had early on decided if it didn't work we'd spend some days in the town and visit nearby places for a few days before heading back to Thailand. Turns out our visas had to be transferred to Yangon first so the only option we had was to fly, a decision we had pre-decided not to take. The immigration and tourism officers were quite courteous however and unnecessarily apologized for the inconvenience. It was possible to travel by boat before but new military rulings completely forbade it now. We also weren't allowed to roam outside the town limits and being rather worried that we might wander too far out with our cycles, we were asked to leave them at the office. Kawthaung is quite a dead end town with peksy touts in the visa re-issueing business which is the only reason foreigners come here. As we had to hire a guide even to visit the beach we decided to admit defeat and head back. The town is a little bit like a non-descript dirty mid-way Indian town and I was in no mood to be reminded of that. But we did have an excellent dal roti sabji meal at a local tea house run by a man of some strange Bangladeshi-Burmese descent. In fact half the locals here seemed and looked quite mixed up between east coat Indians, Bangladeshis and Burmese. Or maybe that's why they were by the pier in the first place. We also met an interesting local officer cum school teacher cum journalist appointed by state who seemed really eager to talk about India's economic state and we couldn't help but exchange email addresses in case of a later visit. So it was back to Ranong and end of trip report first half. Unsuccessful except that we're happy with our bike after 206.5 kms of the primary test and we have the required visas to plan next step. Tomorrow we plot the best route back North and towards Laos. We're still hopelessly amateur at this right now but I can feel some character building.