Kelly
and I rented a motorbike. Not right away. We were actually very apprehensive
about it. Not because we are bad drivers (I actually fancy myself as quite a
good driver), but because neither of us had ever ridden a motorbike before. In
fact, the only experience I had had driving an open vehicle was an ATV I rode
at summer camp in 7th grade, and that venture did NOT end well. I
rammed the thing into a fence and scraped myself up pretty badly as I hit
pavement.
We
had asked around for other options. Are bicycles available for rent? What about
taking a tuk-tuk or taxi? But every response was the same: rent a motorbike. It
is by far the cheapest and most convenient option on the island. It costs the
same as renting a bicycle without the hassle of having to pedal up steep
slopes. And lets be real. The slopes we encountered on our weekend excursion
were gnarly. I would have never made it up the different ascents.
So
we walked around and asked every rental place on the block for a price estimate. We do this, ask for price estimates at
every restaurant, shop, and rental place, always, despite the fact that we normally
encounter the cheapest prices at our first stop. Typical. We rented our bike,
an automatic white Honda, filled out the appropriate forms and received a quick
lesson on how to operate it from the owner of the shop. My first test run was a
disaster. I pulled the throttle way too aggressively and almost ran into a
parked car. The look on the owner’s
face.......but I recovered quickly and drove the bike around the block, braking
successfully as I pulled back into the shop so that Kelly and I could be on our
way.
And
we were off. Cruising along the side of the road as other motorbikes passed us,
steadily, on the right. I must have been driving around 20 mph, but I had no
way of knowing because, ironically, the speedometer on our bike wasn’t working.
Also, disaster struck when it began to rain and sunscreen trickled down into my
left eye as I was driving. The look on my face must have been priceless. I was
crying in one eye, blinking furiously with the other, and trying to swat at
myself, while keeping the bike steady, every chance I could get to rub the
water and sunscreen off my face. It’s a wonder that Kelly and I arrived safely
to our first destination, Paeng Waterfall.
Blunder
upon blunder, I attempted to park our motorbike and ended up pulling the
throttle simultaneously with the brake, knocking over another, parked
motorbike. Kelly quickly got off of our bike, twisted our ignition to off and
lifted up the other, now fallen, motorbike. All was good. No one was hurt,
neither bike was damaged, and there were no witnesses to my little mishap.
Thank goodness.
We
hiked up to the waterfall, which was a tad underwhelming. The waterfall was
more like a piddle-drip; there was hardly any water flowing, which makes sense considering
Thailand is now in its dry season. Regardless, we snapped a few photos and
continued hiking up the trail to an incredible viewpoint. Wild, undeveloped
jungle for miles. It was beautiful.
When
we returned to the base, we got back on the motorbike (this time Kelly drove),
and meandered for another hour and a half. We actually had no intention of
meandering, but ended up missing a turn and driving past the beach we wanted to
end up at. Again, typical. But, we did eventually make it to the correct beach
after a couple of wobbling, on-the-urge-of-tipping-over turns by McGlinch. And
the rest of our afternoon was wonderful as we lay by the beach, tanning our casper-white
thighs.
The
second day of our weekend, we again got lost. We managed to get back to the
beach we had been at the day before and intended on finding a hiking trail to
another beach on the other side of the mountain. However, this trail was very
unclearly marked. We literally drove up and down the same road 3 times trying
to find our way to the trailhead, which we eventually found through
trial-and-error. The hike was wonderful, but far more strenuous than
anticipated based on the description in our Koh Phangan activity book. The path
sloped up and down several times without footholds like ones you might find
hiking in the states. If it had been raining, we most certainly would have
witnessed many a-landslide. But it wasn’t, and Kelly and I each managed to fall
only once. The trail was marked with plastic water bottles, ironic eh?, which
led, appropriately, to Bottle Beach, where we jumped immediately into the ocean
and wiped off all of the dirt and sweat from our journey. Initially planning on
hiking back to our bike, we instead chose to take a water taxi. Very smart
choice in my opinion.
More
to come, always.
-Sparx
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