December 27, 2025
Day 116 — Ban Krut to Ban Boet
Marilee here.
After several days of goofing off — alternating between dips in the infinity pool and frolicking in the ocean, eating big meals and sitting on the beach — it was time to get going again. It was not without some pangs of regret that I said goodbye to the Baan Klang Aow Resort. We had a very relaxing Christmas there, surrounded mostly by large multigenerational families of German tourists, all getting steadily redder in the sunshine as the days passed.
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Because there was a breakfast buffet, we were unable to start off as early as we might otherwise have done this morning (those of you who have been reading from the beginning will be very familiar by now with our love of breakfast buffets). The buffet at the Baan Klang included an omelette station, lots of tropical fruit, as well as traditional Thai breakfast foods - jok, a rice porridge with pork and egg, was particularly good. It takes time and effort to do justice to a good breakfast buffet, it isn’t something that should be rushed — so it was well after 9 by the time we hit the road.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were beautiful days with cloudless skies and just a whisper of a breeze, but on Boxing Day afternoon the wind picked up and the waves started crashing on the beach. No more swimming, not in that wild sea. And by this morning the surf was even bigger, and the wind pushed us south so fast that pedaling was really beside the point. As Tom said, we just needed to put up a sail.
Heading south away from from our resort, the tourist hotels got less and less frequent and more and more dilapidated, until at last they disappeared altogether, replaced by farmland and vegetable stands. The palm trees were rustling noisily overhead in the wind, and every now and then a big palm frond would come crashing down onto the road. For a while we followed a pickup truck with speakers mounted on the roof that was blasting out election slogans as it drove, very slowly, up the road (there is a national election coming up in early February, and the roadsides are already bristling with signs for the local candidates).
After a few kilometers along the beach we reached a headland where a giant Buddha stares contemplatively out to sea, seated in front of a wat. In the fierce wind today, Buddha’s draperies were blowing and billowing dramatically around him. We looked at him for a while, then watched the waves crash on the rocks of the headland, thought about getting a cold drink from one of the vendors nearby, decided we hadn’t worked hard enough yet to deserve a drink, and jumped back on the bikes.
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Around the other side of the headland a large protected bay opened up, where the water was much calmer, and the wind abruptly stopped. So did we. We were nearing the large town of Bang Saphan and we decided to get some lunch to help power us through the hot city traffic.
On the other side of Bang Saphan we encountered something we hadn’t seen yet in Thailand: hills! While pretty tame hills by Japan standards, pedaling uphill in the heat and sun proved quite challenging — but coasting downhill was delightful. So the afternoon went on: some hills, some highway (but relatively lightly trafficked), some country roads, more rubber plantations, more coconut groves, cows grazing under palm trees, ocean occasionally visible off in the distance.
By the time we got to Ban Boet, the little seaside town that was our destination for the day, we were predictably sweaty and exhausted. We found our guesthouse, showered, and then lay around feeling rather dazed for a half hour or so, until we gathered enough energy to go explore the town. Turns out Ban Boet is a surf town, or at least it is when the wind is howling from the north. There were at least a couple dozen surfers carving the waves, and we watched them while having a second lunch at a beachside restaurant, carried out to us by two little girls quite pleased with their responsibilities.
Our guesthouse tonight is less luxurious than our splashy Christmas accommodations, but friendly. The proprietor, a shirtless Danish man, was waiting for us outside when we arrived, and insisted on giving us glasses of orange juice before showing us the room, and his Thai wife let us store our bikes in her front hall overnight. We were given an enormous tiled room with windows on three sides, which a small air conditioner laboured to cool down. We’ll see what tomorrow brings!
Today's ride: 55 km (34 miles)
Total: 5,177 km (3,215 miles)
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