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Mar
2004-09-14 16:16:21

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who speaks very well English. He tells us that Satun is just another 45m and is a relatively easy ride. The guesthouse at the crossing of road 416 seems to be too expensive anyway, so we give it a shot. Not before 4 o’clock of course. In the mean while Lek tells us about his dream to start a guesthouse next year in Satun and how far he is with his preparations. At the moment he is maintaining and repairing bush cutters and has a copy shop in his house in Satun. He invites us to sleep at his place and to take us by pick-up to Satun. We do accept the sleeping offer, but really want to cycle to Satun. Luckily after one and half hour he passes us on the road and to get rid of the heat (wand the two times 125m’s in our legs) we gratefully accept his second offer also. In the evening he gives us some beers and shows us his first bungalow he built on his land next to the jungle in the middle of some hills. The fireplace and the location of the bar is already known and he asks our opinions about the bungalow he build as a test. We really think it will be a wonderful location to come back in a few years.

15/01/2004

Raymond makes an emergency stop. "what?" I ask and he puts his finger on his lips "ssst, listen", he whispers. From the jungle trees on the right side of the road I can hear it clearly. Gibbons! Two or three gibbons are talking. Screaming or whistling would describe it better. Unfortunately I can't see them and we cycle on. We are looking for a last breakfast and cup of coffee in Thailand, but we have only three kilometres left before we cross the border with Malaysia. It happened to us once that we could not change any money at/behind the border, so just to be save making sure we have a full stomach and enough water when we cross the border. At least we hope that we can cross this border, because this crossing is nowhere mentioned. One crossing is over water with a sea ferry the other lays 180km out of our direction and is a highway. These last kilometres the road leads us through a national park. When we turn left for our breakfast at the park headquarters I see a relative large black shadow racing from the side of the road. Its now my turn to make an emergency stop. "What was that?" I ask myself. I cycle on and now Raymond gives a yell from behind. He almost ran over my 'black shadow', a lizard larger than a meter ran almost into Raymond’s wheel.

We find that there is no breakfast available at the headquarters, so we continue to the border crossing. The last two kilometres go up hill and we find a food stall just before the border.

After a noisy night, behind the copy machines in Lek’s house, next to the main road to the port we head for Malaysia.

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