This post comes to you from the uneventful sleepless boredom of the Phuket airport. Its almost 2 am and I have about 4 more hours to kill before our flight leaves for Bali. I have a strange habit that I have developed over the last few years of staying up all night before any early morning flights so that I pass out once I’m on the plane. Also, I usually fly alone and don’t trust myself to wake up if left to my own devices. During my random roamings of airports I always find myself amused by the fact during times of travel basic survival instincts kick in and people just make due with what surroundings they have available to them. It’s not uncommon to see people of any age curled up with all the their belongings on the nearest bench, chair, or floor. There are currently 11 people within eye sight doing just that, and as you can see below my travel partners are no exceptions. And, other than the one ass-hat who was playing acoustic guitar and singing out loud until a half hour ago, I find people are generally very respectful of the other travelers around them.
Enough late night philosophical ramblings and onto the enjoyable times that have been had in Phuket Town. We have spent the last few days in the area venturing out to the surrounding malls and beaches during the days and strolling through the various stores, restaurants, and markets in the town during the evenings. One evening while out strolling around Rob mentioned that he had seen a nice mountain bike sitting in a shop near our guest house. Rob showed me his shop and with my non-existent Thai and the shop owners limited English we established that it was his bike and he was a mountain biker. I decided to go get my laptop and show him some sections from the Life Cycles, bike video, film. He called over another guy and they watched some of the movie. They were clearly stoked on the movie and tried to ask me a bunch of questions about biking. It was established that I was to meet back at this store at 5 pm the next day to go for a ride. Upon arriving at the shop I was lent a sweet titanium Airbourn bike to use and Sethup, Nue, and myself headed off to the trail head. It was about a 15 min ride out of the city to get to the trails. The trails were super fun which consisted of short climbs and steep little descents on a mixture of rolling single track and double track. The most technical section of the ride was probably the roadways to and from the trails, weaving in and around cars and scooters as we were going just as fast in the thick congestion of city traffic… doesn’t help that they drive on the wrong side of the road (to us that is, as it is right to them…).
I ended up going on two rides with these guys and had a blast. They had a sweet riding scene and from what I gathered about 10 to 15 guys ride at the local trails every evening. It was a pretty surreal experience to be sighting on the hill overlooking the town with a bunch of guys all speaking a different language, with the sun setting in the background, and everyone smiling ear to ear from a great evening of riding. Seeing how excited these guys were about riding reminds me of why I love riding so much. It doesn’t matter if you have world class trails, the newest/nicest bikes available (bikes ranged from ancient to top of line), or even speak the same language, just to share the riding experience with a group of riders so happy to be out riding their bikes reminds me of why I will be riding a bike as long as my body is able. Another amazing journey the bicycles has taken me on.
A slightly more random journey began after our second ride. Nue told me to meet him that night at 11 to show me something about a mountain bike race that had happened in the region over the weekend. Rob and I show up at 11. He points to a moped parked at the curb and gestures towards it. Rob and I looked at each other as if too say “can all 3 of us fit on this think without dieing?” He just jumps on an fires it up. Hesitantly we climbed aboard. Although the drive was short, the real surprise was when we when we walked through the back entry of our destination. He had mentioned that we would be going to his work… what he didn’t mention was that he worked at the Pink Lady Café. There are skimpily dressed thai girls on stage singing karaoke and walking around serving drinks. Another quick mind meld with Rob and I know we were both thinking the same thing, what the hell have we gotten ourselves into! Once we reached his office away from all the hubbub and were just chilling looking at bike videos and looking at race pictures it was easy to forget that it was all taking place in one of strangest places I have ever been.
As Phuket is known for its beaches you may be asking yourself, “what about the boat times?”, they were swell to say the least. Marilyn and I spent one day at Surin beach where I went wakeboarding and we both went tubing. They were both spectacular! With the driver doing his best to ensure maximum wipeout carnage. Great times were had, with one of use skimming across the water at all times.
While tubing we noticed much less crowed beach one cove over from where we were set up and made a mental note to visit it the next day. Lets just say that our journey to this beach was not by the most direct route. After an hour of climbing over rocky coastline, and escaping the hour hike back out by sneaking into a luxury resort, we got to enjoy their pristine private beach… somewhat salvaging our lengthy journey to find it.
In Phuket Town I also had the pleasure of meeting up with a friend of mine, who I got to know during my trip to Brasil a few months ago for my cousins wedding. He happened to be traveling though this area and we managed to meet up for a few beers and it was great to catch up in such an unsuspecting place. Safe travels and hope you and Steph have a blast in CR.
So I have managed to kill about 2 hours and 2 rounds of the new Arcade Fire album “the suburbs”. Now for a few more rounds of “the suburbs” and back to the book that kept this blog from being written yesterday…
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