Last week Ian and I rented a motorbike for the day and went off to explore the area around where we are staying here in Thailand. We decided to try all the back alleys and roads branching off from the main that looked interesting. Our first deviation from the well traveled path took us to a secluded beach just a kilometer or two down the beach from where we are staying.

Our second stop was at a small rest area long the beach with huge rocks to climb on. We found a nice built in recliner made of solid rock that made perfect place to watch the waves roll in.

While we were there some local fisherman decided to come out and set up their net just down the beach from where we were sitting

We managed to get to the point of two jetties that made up the entrance of a small marina for the fishing boats. The the first half was easy to get to. The second half took a few different attempts down a couple of roads to finally make it to where we wanted to go. It was worth the adventure though, we ended up finding more rocks to climb and a beach full of shells to dig through

We drove around for quite a while, down many different roads, and dead ends before we found this beach. When we parked the bike and walked down toward the beach we never expected to find this. There were a few local people eating lunch at the entrance to the beach but aside from that it was completely deserted. To the left behind the wall is a huge plot of land with a large house, incredibly beautiful but seemingly deserted. Normally there would be a fence above the retaining wall but so far only the gates at the steps are installed. We had a great time running up and down the beach, writing in the sand and and playing in the water.

Our next stop was pizza and fries for lunch.

We attempted to hike to a scenic viewpoint but were driven away by the swarms of mosquitos at the entrance to the trail. We did manage to make it down to the headquarters for the local national bark and out to a small fishing village that serves as the trail head to one of the caves we hiked to last year.

Ian did some climbing on the large boulders at the edge of the bay and spent some time walking on the beach.

On our way back we found a stunning Buddhist temple nestled into the base of the mountains that flank the shoreline a couple of kilometers inland.

As we were heading back we kept taking guesses on how far we could go before we had to be back for supper. First we thought 60km then maybe we thought we could stretch it to 70 km. In the end we managed to travel 90km on a motorcyle, on one tank of gas that cost $2, for Ian’s 9th birthday.