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August 28, 2006
Po-Ket by Scooter
One out of every seven point five teenagers in Phuket, Thailand is brutally fast on a motor scooter. I managed to keep up with almost everybody at 80km/h but kids would blow by me on the highway with newer scooters that had better tuning. My own scooter was at least five years old; a cracked out Honda Wave with a thready sounding engine and weak, ghostly brakes. It started vibrating at 60 and couldn’t for the life of it get above 85, even on the long slow downhills that led out of the mountains off the west side of the country. When I let off the gas at 80, the engine would backfire.
The Bike
The scooter led me to divide the day trip to Phuket into three stages: the fun stage between the airport and Ban-Ra-Ngeng, the “my brakes don’t work so well” loop from Ban-Ra-Ngeng to the coast (Patong Beach, Karon Beach, Kata Beach) and back to Phuket town; and the “please just make it back” stage between Phuket town and the north side of the Island, with Nai Yang Beach, and Mai Khao.
Patong Beach
The entire trip covered roughly 100 miles/ 160 km. It took the entire day. At least half of time was spent in the rain, which made it more of an adventure than a vacation. The rain was not noticeable at 40 km/h but by 80 it became electric, crackling against exposed skin, cooling off—I imagine—the sunburn which I’d racked up in the morning.
The Map-- I traced out my approximate route using the polygon tool in Google Maps
I rented the scooter from an auto dealership within walking distance of the airport. It cost, for the day, 150 Baht or about $4. The rental fee established a price index in my head and so I was shocked, for example, to find that a Tequila Sunrise was also 150 baht on Patong beach.
Notes:
I found out that the brakes on the bike were not up to par as soon as I hit the rolling mountains outside Patong Beach. These were really steep (over 20% grade) hills with sharp turns in either direction and the terrain, more than the road signs dictated traffic speed. At the same time, I felt the need to keep up with the local kids who, while not exactly racing, were passing me at the start. I decided to open up the throttle a bit on one straight downhill only to hit a turn and watch the brakes weaken out just at the apex. I had that sinking feeling that you get right before kissing a lorry and I swung slowly, sickeningly from the far left lane out into oncoming traffic on the right. Pumping the right hand brake (does this work? I don’t know), I lurched the bike back to the left side as the first pickup truck crested the turn below me to meet the first minivan racing up on me from behind.
It is easy to take wrong turns on the coast. Just before Kata Noi, I missed a turn and ended up at the base of a long mixed cement track/ dirt trail that wound off into the hills. Pickup trucks stopped at the bottom and several men were waiting out the rain at a roadside shack. I decided to take the track, which turned into a dirt road, which turned into a muddy ravine filled road with sharp climbs and drops. I was forced into first gear to get up the hills and several of the downhills required that I walk the bike down, straddling the scooter while holding onto the brakes. At the end of the track there was one final descent into a sketchy jungle camp. Just a few pickups and a cement block compound. Phuket is a tourist island so this was probably a tourist spot of some sort but I decided not to hang around on the thin curve of beach. Instead, I turned the bike around and pushed it painfully in 1st gear back along the mountain bike path maybe 2km to the road. On the way out I passed another group of people trying to extend the ramp into the muck. They waved but more in the “look at the crazy guy” sense than in the “hey, I’m glad to see you” sense.
Kata Noi
The highway into Phuket town—the biggest urban area in Phuket— was under repair when I passed through. The Thai method of highway repair seems to involve scattering tons of loose asphalt over a dirt base. Cars and bikes then grind the loose asphalt into place. Since it was raining, much of the dirt underneath the asphalt has turned to mud. Cars and bikes slowed to a crawl as they were forced to navigate an off-road course. I’d already had some experience turning the scooter into a trials bike that morning and I put it to good use by careening by bike, cars, and gravel trucks at 40-50 km/h even as they were gingerly navigating water filled potholes. As in Boston, the real problem lay not with the slow drivers but the indecisive ones.
The waiter looked at me like I was weird when I ordered a Tequila sunrise at 9:30 in the morning. Maybe it was the coffee chaser.
There are Buddhist temples and shrines all over the place. I need to go back and get more photos but it was rainign and most were visible from the highway at points where I did not really want to stop for pictures.
There was one sculpture along the beach, though. In Katong.
Jibber Jabberin | By jb | 01:59 AM