January 6, 2026
Day 126 — Kura Buri to Khao Lak
Marilee here.
I wish there was more to say about this day. Really, it can be summed up in a few words that have already been used extensively in previous posts: Hot. Sweaty. Long.
Sounds a bit x-rated, but believe me it was not.
We said goodbye to the friendly crew at Tom’s House, and Am, the co-owner who had arranged our Surin tour, asked where we were headed. When we told her, she said merely, “Oh, Khao Lak. Big place.”
I guess that set the tone for the day, and maybe for this post: let’s not waste words, just hit the essentials. Kura Buri — small, rough and ready, cheerful. Khao Lak - big, crowded with tourists, impersonal. The road in between: mostly something to get through.
We’ve been in this situation before, we keep reminding ourselves. Getting from Hiroshima to Shimonoseki, for instance — that was day after day of highway riding, past oil refineries and cement plants and other huge industrial complexes we couldn’t begin to understand, fighting for room on narrow highway shoulders with trucks screaming by. It can’t all be idyllic country roads, we get that. But they wear on you, these long highway journeys.
We managed an early start, so the first few hours were relatively easy. We stopped at a very Chinese-looking temple about mid-morning for a look around but it was completely paved and mostly shadeless and radiating heat — not a spot to linger long.
We stopped for lunch at a little roadside restaurant for my favourite, pad kra pao moo kai dao (rice, fried ground pork with basil and chilies, topped with a fried egg). It was such a small place, the cook was the only person running the restaurant, and she didn’t want to deal with us directly — maybe trying to communicate with a couple of foreign tourists while also handling the lunch rush was just too much. So she solved this by getting other customers to talk to us and translate our answers back to her.
First she got some guy who had just stopped in to pick up his takeout order to bring us cups of ice, so we learned where the help-yourself ice bucket was, to cool the drinking water set out in jugs on the tables. Then she got the two men sitting at the table next to us to take our order and shout it across the restaurant to her, even the answer to the perennial question: “you like spicy?” (The answer is yes). We chatted a bit with them — when they learned that we were Canadian they showed us what they were watching on an iPad while they ate their lunch: a Canada vs Belgium mixed doubles match in the qualifying rounds for the Australian Open. I think Canada won.
After lunch it was time to put our heads down and get the ride finished. We realized we were approaching Khao Lak when the numbers of foreigners on mopeds began to increase dramatically. It was certainly the biggest tourist town we’ve encountered since Hua Hin — a looong stretch of restaurants, shops, bars, hotels on both sides of the highway. Our hotel was towards the far end of this parade so we got to enjoy the full stretch of it, with traffic zooming around us while we scanned the roadside for our hotel.
It turned out to be another small guesthouse tucked behind a tour agency — similar to the setup at Tom’s House in Khura Buri. Here the manager tried to offer us an “upgrade” to a triple room facing the highway, which given the volume of noise coming in, did not seem like any kind of a favour. We firmly pointed out that our reservation was for a bungalow in the garden — I think the first time in the entire trip when we’ve had to refuse a room. And since the bungalows were tucked away behind the main building, further from the road and protected from the worst of the traffic noise, we were glad we did.
We found a shortcut through the grounds of resort hotels down to the beach, for a quick swim and a pre-dinner drink. The beach in town seemed to be dominated by big hotels with fancy beachfront patio restaurants, and rather than hike to the outskirts in search of smaller/cheaper venues, we just went with it and grabbed a table. And once we were ensconced with a beer watching the sunset — well, let’s stay for dinner too. It was a bit overpriced and under spiced, but after all, we were there for the view.
| Heart | 2 | Comment | 1 | Link |
We had a lovely walk back along the beach in the moonlight, enjoying the cool air and the waves on our feet. And we had something amazing to look forward to the next day: we would be getting off the highway!
Today's ride: 86 km (53 miles)
Total: 5,648 km (3,507 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 5 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |