Zoom zoom….flop?
by andrisThailand, 6 Sep 2006 --
Transportation options on these little islands in the Gulf of Thailand are pretty limited. Moving from tiny Koh Tao (where you could pretty much walk everywhere) to much bigger Koh Pangyan made this particularly obvious.
Your A-to-B options here are pretty much limited to: walking, swangthew (pickup truck ‘taxi’ where the passengers ride in the bed of the truck), longtail boat taxi (looks fun, but pretty expensive), and rented moped.
We rented a moped for the last several days, and I have to say…it was nice to get a bit of freedom back. With the taxis you’re stuck having to find one, haggle over the price, and possibly wait until more people show up if you want to pay less…with the moped you just hop on and go.
I think I did pretty well, considering that this was my first motorized two-wheel experience. Granted, it was no Harley and I felt a little wicked-witch-of-the-east (that song from the Wizard of Oz kept running through my head) putting around on the underpowered little bike…but it made jungle hikes, waterfall visits, and yoga classes possible that would have been otherwise inaccessable.
Mom, you may want to skip this next paragraph…I know it’ll freak you out. We did have one minor fender bender. Really it was more of a controlled slow-motion flop. We were riding down a crappy rutted dirt road and I was a little over-eager on the front brake. (I should have remembered the ’speed is your friend’ mantra that’s so key in mountain biking.) We flopped sideways, neither of us any worse for the wear, and the bike’s rear view mirror shattered.
In arguably the best descision on this trip yet, we decided to take the bike to the island Honda dealership to get the mirror fixed (for 150 baht–roughly 4 US dollars!) before returning it and paying some massive fee. I heald my breath when I took the bike back, but they didn’t say anything about the few other scratches and we were home free.
Score one for good karma…maybe it was the afternoon we spent doing a volunteer beach cleanup!
Categories thailand
September 8th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
What day was the full moon festival on your island? Also, I just bought a new map of Thailand but can’t find your islands or the city you left from. Are they on the West side and more southerly from Bankok? There are some little island dots north also. I need the names of bigger towns and islands that are close so I can follow your route more closely.
Glad you weren’t injured in that fall. Love, Grandma W.
September 12th, 2006 at 6:14 am
After Bangkok we headed south. I found the perfect map that shows our route - http://www.travelfish.org/region/thailand/southern_thailand
From Bangkok we went south to Prachuap (monkeys) to Chumphon where we took the night boat to Ko Tao off of the east coast (Koh Tao is an alternate spelling) on to Ko Pha Ngan, and then to Surat Thani, to Krabi, and next to Hat Yai! Thai translated into English always has multiple spellings, and according to the Thais English words have multiple spellings. (I had a bueguette for breakfast the other day)