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Saz and Dave's travels
We got up early today as we had decided to rent a motrobike for the day and explore the south of Phuket island. We planned to follow the coast down checking at Karon beach and Kata beach and ending up at Nai Harn beach on the southern tip of the island (about 40km round trip).
Dave was pretty excited as he has always wanted to ride a motorbike but I was a little aprehensive especially since the first thing Dave did when he got on the motobike to try it out was almost crash straight into a garage door! Dave got a quick lesson off the guy who was renting out the bike but that was a bit hard seeing as the guy didn't really speak any Englsih. He then drove around for 5 minutes, handed over his passport and we were off, straight onto the main road through Patong. Luckily we both had helmets, even though the law here requires only the driver wear one and Dave's helmet was a lovely shade of pink!
The start of the journey was a bit shakey and bumpy as Dave got the hand of the gears and the first stop was to get petrol which was so cheap - only a quid for a full day's riding.
Having safely left Patong, we then began our assent of the mountains between Patong and Karon. The roads were wide and quiet and should not have posed much of a problem, however, in the first ten minutes of learning to ride, Dave had enough problems with just shifting up the gears, let along down. So as we hit the steep roads, it was not long before the bike started to struggle. As we juddered up the hill in 4th gear, Dave decided it would be a good idea to change down to 3rd, however this gear change was so abrupt that we were both thrust forward, nearly over the handlebars and the bike slowed to a stop before it reached the top of the hill! I decided to get off the bike while Dave got it going again and off we were again now whizzing down the steep road in front of us and praying to god that the brakes worked!
This pattern of struggling up hills continued quite frustratingly untill Dave reaslised a smooth gear change could be acheived by letting go of the accelerator before ragging it up the remainder of the hill. However the going was still not great up the mountain paths and we ofter found ourselves pulling wheelies as we changed to first gear.
We stopped for breakfast at Karon beach, getting Danish pastries from the 7-11 and eating them on the beach which was deserted at this early hour of 9am! We then got back on the bikes in the direction of Nai Harn beach - well at least so we thought! We ended up taking a wrong turn that led us about 20 km out of our way and we had to stop twice in the blazing heat and ask for directions. But it was all worth it! Nai Harn beach turned out to be stunning. It was very undeveloped apart from a couple of beachside shacks for restaurants. There was a lovely big lagoon at one end of the beach where local children were swimming! and to the back of the beach there was a large and beautiful lake. Also on the plus side there weren't many people there - seemingly the hoards from Patong hadn't worked out how to get there yet!
We styayed on the beach until about 5pm when we gecided to head back to get the bike back in time. It took about an hour to get back as we went on a much more direct route than the one we had come by and we only stopped once at a viewpoint. The ride back was much smoother and less scary as Dave seemed to be a bit more used to the bike. When we got back to Patong, feeling quite relieved we were in one piece and happy that we had had a good day we dropped the bike off. I noticed the slightly strange look the bike guy gave us but it wasn't until we were back in our room that we realised how sunburned we both were. We both had really red faces and my arms and legs were quite red and my shoulders and Dave's back was red - not enough cream put on today oh dear!.
Dave nipped out to pick up our washing - finally clean! and a load of aftersun. Later we went out for some tea and we also got a dark coloured Kaftan each to cover us up from the sun tomorrow as we had decided to explore the North of the island tomorrow after having such a good time today (Dave's 4th Kaftan!)
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