Wednesday, January 11, 2006

10th Jan - Bankrud Beach Youth Hostel

Today's been relatively uneventful and fairly pleasant. Cycling's still rather hard work and i'm beginning to hurt in various places that I won't go into detail about. I cycled about 65 km and ended up at an amazing HI Youth Hostel - one of their flagship hostels. It's relatively expensive (300 B) but very luxurious. I strung up my mozzie net relatively successfully in my bamboo beach hut then went to the beautiful long empty beach, lined with palms and punctuated by a steep wat-topped hill. It was about 5pm by then and I swam for the first time in the dying sunshine. The sea wasn't cold, but it was very windy, so the waves were a bit big for a wussy swimmer like me. I messed around for a bit, then got out and swam in the pool.

While I was eating I was reading my phrase book, attempting to begin to make sense of the Thai language. One of the chefs saw this and seemed to appreciate me making the effor to learn Thai, so spent about an hour or so teaching me most of the letters (how to write, say and what they mean) and all the numbers up to 9,999,999. It was hard work, but I really appreciated it. He made me write out the pronunciation for every single number up to 100. I tried to skip and just do 50, 60, 70, etc, but he was very firm with me!

After that I chatted to two nice young German couples. Most people I have met so far have been Germans.

When I went to bed I saw two wierd white lizards in the bathroom. This morning I got a real fright when I was fiddling with my bags. A cockroach came out of the lid. Other than that the only scary stuff I have seen has been dead snakes on the road.

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