After a lovely nights sleep we charged downstairs for breakfast; eggs, toast, jam, fresh fruit and instant coffee not too bad really.

Beautiful cycling road, rubber trees each side

From the hotel it was a 4 km cycle to get into town where we stocked up on supplies from the 7 Eleven including some cash from the ATM. Here in Thailand it costs a £5.50 withdrawal fee on top of the normal charges, the most expensive fees from any of the countries we have visited.

Today we actually cycled up real hills! The first for quite a long time. The route took us through different scenery again, large oil palm tree plantations, here is a good link explaining about the controversy of palm oil HERE. and rubber tree forests, you can see the tapping cuts and collecting cups on the trees. More information from Wikipedia on rubber tapping HERE.

Tapping cups

When the road moved inland we got some hills, nothing very steep though and it gave ever changing scenery. Here we were stopped by Thai Police, we thought they would check passports etc but seemed to just want a chat with us about our travels, we shook hands and went on our way.

Inland roads have hills!

Palm oil trees

Once back to the coast we made our way towards Chumphon Airport where we found a nice resort, it has the best accommodation we have stopped in so far, The Beach Resort and Residence. There was a power cut tonight, this time of year the monsoon winds blow strongly from the north and can bring down trees on to the low hanging power cables. When we say low we mean waist height and there were men wielding chainsaws cutting down vegetation around these cables today, potential for disaster methinks.

The hotel

The sea views were good but the sea is a muddy brown colour from the silt being disturbed by the large swell due to the wind.

Brown sea

Our Strava route today.