Thai Christmas

Riding south out of Goa it felt great to be back on my bike. In this happy state I hardly noticed the heat, humidity and hills. By the end of the second day the consequences caught up with me, my legs cramping badly in the night.
So I cut down the daily mileage and pottered from pretty beach to pretty beach. Even though it was Indian holiday season these were normally deserted. Indians don't sunbathe, they prefer the pale look (half the adverts on billboards and TV are for skin whitening products). Also, I was told, Indians like crowds, so a deserted beach stays deserted.
To fly to Thailand I had to get the train up the coast to Mumbai / Bombay. So I found a guesthouse by the sea and topped up my tan while waiting a few days for the train.
It felt weird to fly east but end up in a country as westernised as Thailand. Everywhere I looked there were 7 eleven stores and american style pick up trucks. I had to ride through the centre of Bangkok. It seems like an interesting city with its canals and street markets and buddhist temples. But it was a sunday and I didn't want to hang around to get caught by weekday traffic gridlock.
For Christmas I planned to go snorkelling in the fish filled, clear warm waters of the Andaman Sea off Thailand's south west coast. I reached the sleepy island of Koh Muk and lived in a bamboo hut for a week, snorkelling everyday.
Next I head south through Malaysia to the port of Malacca from where the ferry crosses to the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Indonesia is dauntingly long. But as the chinese proverb says "a journey of one thousand miles starts with a single pedal".

Peak season in Goa, I had this beach to myself

Nightime photo of a fire juggler in Thailand

We kayaked through a 70 metre long tunnel into the Emerald Cave

As well as seeng the cave we also kayaked to some lovely snorkelling places