Yes! 6 days in and our first full night sleep! We did stay up until 01:30 though to increase our chances of sleeping through and it seemed to work despite being a particularly muggy night. Sleeping whilst sweating does not come easily to my Welsh blood. Once up, you know what comes next….the coffee hunt! Today we walked to a different place called Good cup, sneaking past no name cafe so as not to upset the owner. Good cup, it turns out was an apt name. Em had a oat capaccino and I was feeling wild so went for something new which was an iced oat matcha latte…… to match my new fancy haircut. What has become of me? There was a bit of confusion ordering until an Englishman (5 years in Thailand) stepped in to help us. You could tell he had been out here a while as he was wearing a woolly jumper and we were sweating in vest tops.
After we finished our drinks our hosts picked us up to take us to a forest park to satisfy our need for some nature. On the drive there we spotted a huge shiny snake gliding across the road and I fought every urge in my body to jump out of the car to get a closer look, we couldn’t tell if it was an ok snake a bad snake or a really bad snake. It was still exciting watching it through the car window as it slowly dissolved into the grassy verge. This was a good start! We pulled up into the forest car park and walked through the trees heading for the beach. I chased a few bugs around trying to get a picture and then I saw a giant hornet and started skipping after that hoping it would land so I could get closer but it never did and I eventually let it go its own way and caught up with the others now on the beach. The beach was a long arc of sea smoothed sand stretching from a forested headland to a man made breakwater at the far end. The drift line was like something out of Robinson Crusoe….littered with coconuts (some hairy some smooth) bamboo and strange shells. It was pretty windy and the sea was choppy with small blown out waves. The water was warm and pushing freshly marooned shells in before our eyes. Every now and then there would be a dead silver shiny fish sliding up and down the sand with the foamy water.
After a lengthy walk we headed back to the car and cafe for coffee number 2 and an iced cocunut water. There were chickens everywhere scratching around and I remembered reading something about them being used to kill any snakes lurking too close to human areas. Then we moved onto a boardwalk through the mangrove and you could easily see why people struggle in mangroves…..it was like a prison…..each tree with 20 or so legs tangled into those of a neighbour it would take you the best part of a day to cover 50 metres. Mangroves are loved by crabs and an info board suggested there were at least 8 species here. Initially they were difficult to spot but once you got your eye in you could get a glimpse of them unless your shadow crossed them at which point they would disappear in a flash back into their muddy holes. Some had bright red claws and lovely blue markings. At the end of the walkway we jumped on a boat and an old Thai lady slowly took us off down the main channel. Within a few minutes a very large snake swam past us, it’s head raised out of the water like a submarines periscope. This was closely followed by a large swimming lizard, you know the ones as long as a large dog and as tall as a medium sized rabbit. There were plenty of egrets about and after about 10 minutes we emerged into a large shipping channel hitting the wake of a small boat and alarmingly rocking almost to the point of no return. As the sea was rough most of the boats seemed to be in the harbour with fishermen on deck repairing nets and smoking cigarettes happy to return the waves of a couple of Welsh tourists. We cruised in close to the treeline and had an excellent view of a large kingfisher that was perched on a branch hanging about 10 cm above the waters surface. The quiet captain had been watching our pointing and spotting and now joined the game taking us in closer to see various birds and a very large lizard who seemed to be tasting our breath with it’s whip-like tongue.
We eventually docked on a small wooden jetty and exited the watercraft like a couple of wobbly landlubbers much to the amusement of the Thai’s. Quickly walking back to civilisation along the mangrove walkway as Emma needed a pee. In her rush to the loo’s she almost walked into a hand sized golden orb spider (skull like carrapiece, red fangs and yellow stripes) that was hanging in its web between two trees. It was big and exactly at face height. While I was trying to get the camera to focus on it the wind kept blowing it closer to me and sending little shivers down my spine. To get a feel for it hold your hand out in front of you, palm towards your face, fingers splayed. Now put your open hand on your face and pretend it is a giant spider. We grabbed another drink to keep ourselves hydrated and decided to walk along to the other end of the beach into the settlement and maybe get some food.
The beach was lovely and nobody was around, just us and the coconuts. When we eventually got to the other end we realised we were cut off by the tide and after much debating we accepted we would have to behave like trashy tourists and climb up and along someone’s garden wall which had a drop on the right hand side 10 foot down onto the beach. At the end of this wall we clambered onto another thinner wall and had to walk along this now with a 10 foot drop both sides, one to the sea and one to a overgrown field where Emma saw a rat bouncing along. We could see that if we balanced along this and around a corner we could make it to what looked like a road. Walking with aeroplane arms we made it to the end. I, being a gentleman, offered to jump down into the overgrowth first clapping loudly to (hopefully) scare away snakes and shouting at the ground to (hopefully) scare away spiders, rats and any other unsavouries. I jumped down, checked my feet and gave Em the green light to join me. She did we climbed onto the road and smugly high fived each other.
Turning around we looked up as a dog ambled into the road 100 yards ahead of us. Hmmm a dog. This was closely followed by another and another and another. We were now looking at 5 dogs and 5 dogs were looking at us. 5 dogs were walking at us. 5 dogs were trotting at us. 5 dogs were running at us. We both turned on our heels and launched into the field and remembering Emma’s dad’s advice about stomping loudly to scare away snakes we ran stomped through the field and jumped and pulled ourselves up the far wall half expecting teeth to clamp onto our achilles at any moment but we made it out alive looking back we could see 5 dogs laughing at us.
We followed our own footsteps back up the beach and found another track to the main road and then headed home. Before I knew it we were back in a massage house for Thai massage number 2. The Thai ladies seem to love the way I put on their massage pyjammas, take them off and then put them on the right way around. Toady they called me Pappa…..I think short for Pappa Smurf. My lady, Lilly was kind and gentle to me as Joy had breifed her I was a wimp and it was also clear to her I had no idea what I was doing. I was lying there at one point and I could swear it was that spider massaging me. There was no way a human had that many knees and elbows to dig into my poor back and legs! Lilly got a 100 Baht tip and danced off with a big smile on her face waving her note around like a flag. I had made her day and that made my day too.
There was a food stall outside so we got some deep fried twisty potatoes sprinkled with salt. Simple, crisp and golden they were delicious (the little girl who sold them to us got a 5 baht tip – the leftover change and had a smile as big a Lilly’s). It was dark now and we headed home to an awesome home cooked meal of Jasmine rice, massaman curry and stir fry expertly cooked by Joy followed by a pineapple tart flavoured kit Kat that we had aquired in the shop earlier that day, Emma was unsure if it was good or bad!
A quick cool off in the pool before an early night (11 pm) as we have to arise at dawn tomorrow for our next adventure.
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